MODERN FICTION.

ITS INFLUENCE AND VALUE.

(BY W. LESLIE CURNOW, B.A.)

The growth of literature supplies one of the most remarkable features of the complex life of the nineteenth century. In other spheres of activity there have been great and varied developments: but if a discerning Rip Van Winkle were to awake, after a siesta of half a century, nothing would surprise him more than the wonderful multiplication of books, and if he were to ask the librarians of the circulating libraries what class of books was most in demand, he would find that by far the widest taste was for fiction. This branch of literature attracts more readers than all the other branches put together. The names of its producers are more familiar to the masses than the best of those who are distinguished in other departments of literature, Thackeray, Dickens, and George Eliot are more generally known, and exert a wider influence than Professor Huxley, Herbert Spencer, and Professor Freeman. The writers of fiction touch the heart of the great body of the people, and convey their thoughts in a language that is well understood.
But what do we mean by fiction? I take fiction in its most generally accepted sense of prose fiction, that is to say, the novel. In its wider sense, fiction, of course, embraces the whole range both of poetry and the drama. But even limiting fiction in this way, we shall still find in it a wide field of observation, and how it has grown with and helped to mould our complex modern society.

How far back does modern fiction go ? The novel itself in a comparatively recent growth. We may date it in England from Robert Greene, whose efforts in Queen Elizabeth's reign gave it the start, which was soon followed up by other workers in the field. The earlier Italian short story, Novella, was perhaps the key to the later development in Elizabeth's time. After Greene we get a continually lengthening list of names. There are Mrs. Aphra Behn, the novelist of the Restoration; Mrs. Harwood, the "shameless scribbler" of the Dunciad; Defoe, Swift; then came Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne and Goldsmith. After them the standard of the British novel does not rise nor yet does it fall, in the hands of Mackenzie, Miss Reeve, Miss Burney, Beckford, Cumberland, Robert Badge and Dr. John Moore. But it is not our purpose to give a history of the British novel. The great names of its creators are mentioned rather to illustrate the successive stages of its growth. How can we, in tracing this growth, find a line of demarcation between ancient and modern fiction ? Do Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne, for instance, belong to the earlier school, while Scott, Bulwer. Dickens and Thackery are on the side of the moderns? Or does ancient fiction merge imperceptibly into modern fiction ? This view can scarcely be maintained. On the contrary, it may be asserted that the voice of modern fiction is clearly heard, sounding its opening and distinctive note, at the time when the old sentimental and artificial style of novel receives its death-blow, and is swept aside to give place to the vigorous, healthy movement of Walter Scott. And in the history of English poetry we can trace a parallel to this movement in English prose. Did not Cowper, and after him Wordsworth, rebelling against the artificial poetry which had begun with Dryden, turn the current in a new direction ?

In these men we have a deeper reverence for nature, and they are characterised by a return to truth and simplicity. The real beginning of this new movement in prose and verse may be found in the French Revolution, but this is not the place to trace this connection further. Sufficient for our purpose is it to notice that Scott led the way to a new type of fiction. To him belongs the credit of introducing the historical novel, which did such good service in stirring popular interest and enthusiasm for the past. He it was too, that freed English fiction from the bondage of sentimentality, and introduced into the novel a poetical element which had previously been missing. And above all, he brought to his work a fine sense of the picturesque in nature. After Scott passing over the many-sided Bulwer—poet statesman, dramatist, novelist come the well-beloved names of Dickens and Thackeray. Pathos and broad humour marked the first; satire was the keen-edged weapon of the second. The genius of Dickens led him to study the lower grades of society, and his graphic delineations make us weep over "the simple annals of the poor." The fancy of Thackeray found work amongst social and political absurdities. They both materially widened the scope and increased the power of the novel, but in neither of them is to be found any indication of the line English fiction is subsequently to take. Dryden tried his hand at the drama, and, on the whole, failed, but at least he had the merit of laying down the lines it afterwards followed. Thackeray and Dickens succeeded at the novel, but cannot be said to have seriously influenced its future. They rarely or never touch the heights and depths of human passion.
Whether for good or for ill, the novelist cannot fail to influence his readers. His influence for good lies chiefly in the power he wields over the better part of our emotional nature, making us burn with feverish excitement or melt into pitying tears. Thus the refining elements of our nature are awakened, and kept in play ; we learn to detest vice more thoroughly, and to be more deeply moved by beauty of every kind. The novelist is often painter, poet and artist in one. With practised hand be brings out the lights and shadows whether it be in human character or in natural scenery. By the aid of novels, too, we get an insight into human nature, and in those which are largely autobiographical, are brought in contact with the workings of the soul of the author, and realise that in its highest and purest branches, fiction is a great teacher. What a broadening of sympathies can be effected by a writer like Charles Dickens. What a leaven of the spirit of fraternité et égalité is spread through all classes of readers—what a broad wave of humanness helping to sweep away the flotsam and jetsam of narrowness and uncharity. Novels widen the horizon of the mass of the people, giving them a glimpse into the other realms and the other modes of life. The artisan and the farmer's wench learn about the doings of "high life." Through a Dickens the gentlewoman " reared in pomp and pleasure" learns much about the sufferings and strivings of a world she is but too apt to ignore ; she is brought to see that there may be heroism and even contentment in the under world of the poor. Thus a wholesome levelling tendency is introduced.
It is held by many that the first business of fiction is to interest. Give us more of incident and less of character analysis in your novels, they urge. And no doubt, at a means of recreation, as a solace to the wearied brain, fiction is of immense value. What the brain-weary want is to be lifted for a time above themselves, to find a release from " the trivial round, the common task." The novel takes us, for a time, out of our troubled surroundings. For a brief space we can wander unfettered in the realms of fancy, and can people the scenes painted by the hand of genius. " I bless all novel writers," said Charles Darwin, whoso custom it was to devote an hour every morning to listening to the reading of a novel. To those whose ordinary work necessitates concentration, the novel is a welcome relief. It relaxes the strain upon the nerves and supplies mental change of air. Novelists like Scott and Dickens have given countless hours of joy and gladness to their readers. What a possession is this of fiction, open as it is to all mankind, to the young and the old, the rich and the poor! The struggling mechanic has often to deny himself of much that wealth alone will bring. But in the commonwealth of fiction all distinctions of creed and class are at an end. Charles Lamb, in his genial view of the old comedies, describes them, in a Fuller-like phrase, as being "out of the diocese of conscience." We may adapt this and say that fiction takes us out of the diocese of classdom. We have the freedom of books insured by the nominal prices that reign, and by the free public libraries that are scattered through the land.

To much that has been said as to the value of the novel, most, perhaps, will give ungrudging assent. But as yet nothing has been said about drawbacks and dangers. The unfriendly critic contends that in the general deluge of light literature novels pass through our hands too rapidly to influence us to any great extent; impressions are too hurried to be deep or lasting. The novel of to-day effaces the memory of its companion of yesterday. Besides, we read to kill time or to distract our thoughts. So long as the interest of the book is well sustained, we care not for much else. Even granting that the novel arouses our emotions and widens our sympathies, yet the feelings of pity, philanthropy, or scorn that are thus engendered have no practical result, and we are unconsciously led into the habit of feeling these emotions but never acting on them—in fact, of blunting the edge and wasting the freshness of those faculties on an unreal object, the mere fanciful creation of an author's brain. Novels certainly have a value in providing a kind of dreamland for those who lead bald, uninteresting lives; but if indulged in to excess, they spoil us for more serious pursuits. And here the critic may quote Ruskin, who says, "The best romance becomes dangerous if by its excitement it renders the ordinary course of life uninteresting, and increase the morbid thirst for useless acquaintance with scenes in which we shall never be called upon to act." Inveterate novel-reading for most people is a pernicious thing ; especially in the young, who form a very large percentage of the novel-reading public, is the result of this taste seen. Novels certainly do not incline them to " do noble things, not dream them all day long."

Opinions differ as to the office a book fills in our lives. Bulwer Lytton makes one of his characters say, " Books are waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we gain from thought." This, perhaps, is exaggeration, but still it carries a note of warning for the habitual novel-reader. False ideas and false views are easily instilled into the minds of the young and immature. It is an easy thing for a clever writer to throw such a glamour over vice that we do not regard it as such ; he will even make it appear virtue. Our ideas of right and wrong become, for the time, blunted and confused. The writer who shows us vice in its native ugliness himself provides the antidote, but when fancy, imagination, and argument are made to cloak the lascivious thought and wanton act, then comes the danger. And, above all, he may urge that as well as arousing the refining emotions, the novel has the power to excite our bad passions.
What is to be said to this formidable and apparently crushing array of charges against the hapless novel? Some of the objections do not carry much weight ; it is easy to raise objections ; but others are valid, and, it may be serious. They go to prove that though the influences of fiction are manifold, yet they are not so weighty as are generally imagined.
As novels increase they cover a wider field end become more varied in character. As well as being of different order of ability, they may be divided into various classes. Mr. Anthony Trollope follows the realism begun by Thackeray, but gives us photographs, not pictures. He is too ample in his descriptions, too minute in details. As a reaction from this, we get the sensational novel, at the head of which stands Mr. Wilkie Collins, and with him may be classed Miss Braddon, Farjeon, and a host of others. This style of fiction delights in thrilling situations and harrowing details, as its name of " the shilling shocker " indicates, and its popularity is enormous. In the hands of Mr. Charles Reade the novel becomes the vehicle for advocating reforms, showing up blots on our modern civilization, such as the cruel treatment of criminals and the sufferings of the inmates of lunatic asylums. Under this head, too, come the " novels with a purpose." " I have taken," says Mr. Reade, " a few undeniable truths out of many, and have laboured to make my readers realise there appalling facts of the day which most men know, but not one in a thousand comprehends, and not one in a hundred thousand realises, 'until fiction which, whatever you may have been told to the contrary, is the highest, widest, noblest and greatest of all the arts—comes to his aid, studies, penetrates, digests the hard facts of chronicles and blue books and makes the dry bones live." This device of Mr. Reade's has not been without results. It has done much to make the novel a power in the land. Of course, in a sense, Charles Dickens was, in this class of fiction, the precursor of Charles Reade. But after Dickens the task of wrestling with abuses seems to have dropped out of fashion, until it was taken up by Reade. This kind of novel assumes many shapes. Sometimes it is a satirist of existing institutions, sometimes as a cariacaturist of abuses. Thackeray satirised the absurdities and artificialities of the society of his day. Who has not been moved to tears by the early trials and troubles of Oliver Twist, and who can doubt that by its merciless exposure of the poor law this book did more to seal the fate of the workhouse system in England than anything else could have done. In " Nicholas Nickleby " the cruelty of the Yorkshire schools is denounced, and in other works of Dickens we see the hand of the reformer. Mrs. Beecher Stowe's " Uncle Tom's Cabin " was also a work with a great purpose, and one that did much to accomplish the end it had in view. Now writers are continually giving us fresh types of the novel. Mr. William Black, for example, has originated the description of phases of Scottish scenery and Scottish life and certain aspects of London life, while Mr. Clarke Russell has chosen the line of stories of the sea. So, too, we have political novels, at the head of which stand Disraeli's " Coningsby " and " Sybil." A star of the first magnitude appears on the horizon of fiction in the person of George Eliot, with her English fiction takes a now departure. Her later novels after " Adam Bede " show this most cleverly. They are thoughtful, analytic, introspective, metaphysical, and scientific. No doubt as novels they fail, but they show us the tendency of modern thought. It was the time when Carlyle exerted his early influence, the time of " In Memoram," of the great Oxford movement, of the "Origin of Species," of "Maine's Ancient Law." It was a period of intellectual excitement. Evolution, development, and heredity were words in every mouth. In George Eliot we have all those things at work. In her hands the English novel takes a scientific turn, and it is this serious, thoughtful, analytic, and scientific character of the modern novel which has given it the hold over thinking men that it has acquired.

Now, we may note a further change in fiction. The novel has so far departed from its earlier form, that it is coming to be used as a vehicle for propounding some pet theory, or a medium through which a writer gives to the world his views on men and things. Formerly a popular writer put forth his theories in the form of a dry treatise or pamphlet. Few read these nowadays. The popular writer now prefers to give his views under the guise of a story. To such a class of books belong "Robert Elsmere" and "John Ward Preacher." There are of course objections to be urged against this latest development. Writers with no genius for narrative are forced to a task in which they fail. Besides, in a book like "Robert Elsmere" the element of religious discussion seems to be out of place, mixed up as it is, with the loverlike concerns of ordinary novels. Moat serious-minded folk would rather have the religion and the love making apart, agreeing with the spirit of the Spanish proverb that says wine and water apart are two good things, but when mixed both are spoilt. The natural answer to these objections is that had Mrs. Humphry Ward given us her views in any other way she would not have appealed to a tithe of the number of readers, and would by no means have achieved the success she has accomplished. Her success, however, lies not in the weight that her theories carry, but in the fact that she has given us the results of deep thought and an honest exposition of the doubts and intellectual strivings of many at the present day. This new movement in fiction shows us how the novel is being altered and shaped by the changes that have come over modern society.
The closing years of the nineteenth century are marked by a spirit of intellectual unrest, of intellectual topsy-turveydom. Questioning and doubt are in the air we breathe. The old beliefs are being toppled over one by one. Life, too, is now a thing of rush and hurry. We live at high pressure. The age of simplicity has passed away. We see in our literature indications of this, and nowhere more clearly than in fiction. Novelists of the present day fearlessly handle the social, political, and religious problems of the hour, or the deeper problems of the age. Mrs. Humphry Ward, as we have seen, comes prominently forward in this way. Mr. Walter Besant, too, in his "All Sorts and Conditions of Men " and "Children of Giboon" had in view the amelioration of the poor in the east end of London, a problem that has been and is engaging the attention of philanthropists and statesmen.
This new turn of the novel seems to open up a field for writers that it likely to widen as time goes on. It helps to take from the novel some thing of its light ephemeral character, gives it weight, and makes it of value for future ages. Even the lighter fiction, however, is of great value in this respect, for this form of literature is most in touch with our everyday concerns. For example. if we wish to get an insight into the social life of the time of George II., it can be found nowhere so readily as in the novels of Fielding and Smollett. In the same way the best of the novels of to-day will be eagerly read a century hence for the purpose of giving a true picture of our society, and our intellectual moods, for much of the genius of the age has devoted itself to fiction writing, and the novel of to-day has usurped the place of the drama of old. In this way does fiction serve posterity, giving a reflex of society, showing "the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure."
An interesting discussion upon the lines novel writers should take up has lately been raised by Mr. W. D. Howells. He advocates more of the novel of character and less of the novel of incident. Most readers will agree that the first business of the novel is to interest. "I have always held," says Mr. Wilkie Collins, "the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of a work of fiction should be to tell a story." Probably there will be fewer supporters of Mr. Howells' theory than of that of Mr. Collins. George Eliot's later novels are generally held to be inferior to her earlier novels. Why ? Because the later novels fail to interest or amuse ; they have too much philosophy, psychology, and preaching. If novels aim over the heads of the people, the people will not read them, they will go elsewhere to be interested and amused. It may be an office of fiction to teach, but not to preach. George Sand held the idea that the novel should be as much a poetical as an analytic work. It has come to be admitted that the novel is to lift us out of ordinary life for a time to take us into new and, brighter surroundings. Thus few will share the conceptions of George Eliot and Charlotte Bronte as to what a novel should be. The former has shown us life as it is "under the sad and bitter condition of pain, sorrow, and hopelessness." Charlotte Bronte, in producing "The Professor," determined that she should write a man's life as men's lives usually are. " As Adam's son," said she, " he should share Adam's doom, and drain throughout life a mixed and moderate cup of enjoyment." But the average man and woman will agree that there are enough cares and sorrows in real life without going to novels or the stage to get more. Thackeray held this opinion, "So I recommend," he says, "all people to act with regard to lugubrious novels and eschew them. I have never read the Nelly part of the 'Old Curiosity Shop ' more than once; whereas I have Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness by heart ; and in like manner, with regard to 'Oliver Twist' it did well to frighten one in numbers, but I am not going to look on Sikes murder, and to writhe and twist under the Jew's nightmare again. No, no ; give me Sam Weller and Mr. Pickwick for a continuance." If fiction is to be the soother of mankind, it it is to be "the world's sweet inn " where men turn for rest and recreation, then we must welcome the novels that avoid pain and sadness. If, on the other hand, fiction is to scourge vice, to hold up the mirror to nature, and to aim at being a powerful moral teacher, then preference must be given to a graver type of novel.
But there is another point and that is to look at the novel in the light of art. One of the very first requisites of art is truth to nature, yet it is here that the modern English novels are found wanting. In the English periodicals, both Mr. Rider Haggard and Mrs. Lynn Linton have raised their voices against the rule of " the young person." There are certain passions and phases of human nature which fiction must not touch. The result of this, it is contended, is to make most of the novels of character untrue to nature and to art. Without going into the subject it may be stated that truth to art does not lie in merely copying nature. Modern English novels are too often failures from an artistic point of view, but this is not due to want of freedom of treatment. It is rather the result of the idea that obtains in England that any educated man or woman can write a novel. French fiction, as a rule, shows more careful and more artistic work than English fiction, and this is because the French novelist looks on fiction as his metier, in which he must serve a careful apprenticeship. The scenes, and all the details of the scenes, in his books, are the result of careful study ; nothing is superfluous, every word tells. Too often in a modern English novel one may cut out entire pages without feeling that anything is taken from the unity of the whole.
We may glance at the course that modern fiction has taken in France. Freedom of treatment, plain speaking, questionable subjects, and minute details are the distinguishing traits. George Sand makes love the text of all her novels. She exalts it as the passion without which life is a comparative blank. It is no matter whether it be free love that is without the stamp of the church ceremony. If it be love it suffices. Zola, with microscope in one hand, pencil and note-book in the other, goes into unclean places and gives us unclean details. He rivals the shorthand reporter in the divorce court. He tells us that be is giving us pictures that are faithful to life, and that in laying bare vice and immorality he is doing a service to virtue. He says of himself, "Etre maitre du bien et du mal, reglee la vie . . n'est ce pas là etre les ouvriers les plus utiles et les plus moraux du travail humain ? " Zola avers that he and his school are like surgeons and prefer unhealthy subjects. They have no interest in what is normal and natural. Zola glories in the depths of human corruption. He is always insisting that the novel should be "scientific " He poses as the grand exponent of "naturalisme" But what is this " naturalisme ? " Take it at its best it is not true to nature, it supplies a false picture of life. Zola cannot claim even the merit of having seen what he described. For each of his novels he simple crammed up "mountains of notes," as his biographer, M. Paul Alexis, tells us, collected from such friends and books as afforded the material be wanted. Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson describes him as the " victim of sexual insanity." His books pander to a low taste for the morbid and indecent. We may admit that he is a writer with a method, and that he is conscientious according to his lights. We may even, in part, approve of his theory, but certainly not of his practice. The method of Zola's master, Balzac has more to recommend it. Zola has been the means of founding a school in France and his influence has not been unfelt in England, where George Moore and Frank Danby have followed in his steps. George Eliot's later works were affected by the French idea that the novel should above all things be "scientific." But Zola does not by any means represent true realism. His is only the baser part of the higher art. In a much truer sense can we describe the Russian Tolstoi as more of a realist than Zola. Zola's realism concerns itself chiefly with immorality and vice.
On the whole, we may congratulate ourselves that English fiction is free from naturalisme as the French seem to understand it. Naturalisme in the hands of its leading exponents, ignores the finer emotions of life, and its art, if art , it can be called, is to drag human nature downward instead of raising it. It seems incapable of calmly standing aloof and judging impartially of good and evil. To many French novelists it appears stupid to give types of goodness in their characters. They make no pretence of holding up the mirror " to all that is most beautiful and earnest in human thought and life," They even look on the English novel with its moral tone as a kind of hypocrisy. But says Mr. Besant, " to set up a standard of purity and to advocate it is not hypocrisy," and this is the view taken by English readers.
After this glance at the methods of French novelists and the effect they have had, we are prepared to examine the outbreak in England of a feeling of hostility to the restraining influence of the circulating libraries and the British matron. The circulating library is a great power in the land, and some novelists complain of it as preventing fiction from showing a true picture of life. They say that if they describe certain phases of life, the circulating libraries will not accept their books, and they are not strong enough to resist this power. They object to being tied down by what they consider mere conventionality. In the " New Review " for January, 1890, we have the opinions of three such capable writers as Mr. Walter Besant Mrs. Lynn Linton, and Mr. Thomas Hardy on the interesting subject of "Candour in English Fiction." Mrs. Lynn Linton and Mr. Thomas Hardy advocate greater freedom. The former says : "The British matron is the true censor of the press, and exerts over fiction the repressive powers she has tried to exert over art. Things as they are—human nature as it is—the conflict always going on between law and passion, the individual and society—she will not have spokes of ... no one must touch the very fringes of uncertificated love under pain of the greater and lesser excommunication." Mrs. Lynn Linton would thus have closer truth to human nature, a nearer approach to Balzac. Mr. Walter Besant takes the opposite side, and maintains that there is freedom enough at present, instancing "Adam Bede," "A Terrible Temptation," " Ruth," and " The Scarlet Letter." He forcibly winds up by saying : " Those writers that yearn to treat of the adulteress and the courtesan, because they love to dwell on images of lust are best kept in check by the existing discouragements. The modern Elephantis may continue to write in French."
Most people will be of opinion that Mr. Walter Besant's is the stronger side. Candour of the kind indulged in by the modern French school is a thing English taste will not tolerate. It insists on a certain dramatic reserve while at the same time giving scope for artistic treatment. This expression of discontent and desire for more French like methods seem to indicate an unstable condition of the novel in England. It seems to give signs of a want of power, a failure to understand the influences that are at work, shaping the heart of the great English nation, and finding in these material enough for all purposes. And this forces upon us the question. " Is English fiction on the decline?" Certainly, we can count on our fingers the names of its great living writers. Consider, too, the quality of the novels the circulating libraries are every year sending forth. The reading public will have something new. The old favourites they have read and re-read. To supply this growing demand there is ever issuing from the printing presses a weak insipid type of fiction, unrelieved by any spark of genius or knowledge of human nature. Naturally this must have a deleterious effect on the public taste. If it it not on the decline, English fiction seems, at any rate, to have arrived at a stationary period, or at what on second thoughts it would perhaps be better to regard as a period of transition. What the future is to be it is hard to say. Certain it is that unless some genius arises to lead the way to a new school in England, our fiction will succumb to the influence of the French schools. We wait for a writer great enough to feel the varying influences of the time, not to be controlled by them; but to subdue these influences for his own ends. We wait the coming of a mastermind that will restore the supremacy of the novel in England, giving to it some of the realism of Fielding, the large humanity of Dickens, the careful science and thought of George Eliot the rich fancy of Bulwer, a touch of the romance of Scott with some of the directness and charm that belong to French art, and combining all in one harmonious whole.

 s.m.h. 26 December 1890,